Keywords

Travelling can be many things. The traveller spreads news and ideas but also captures information and goods and is therefore both admired and eyed with suspicion. Travelling can be the search for a utopian better way of life, an instrument of knowledge production, but also implies an element of domination and dispossession of others. The European bourgeois ideology of the home as the woman’s proper place has made travel a rebellious practice for women per se.1 However, early praise of courageous woman travellers breaking free from constricting gender norms in the nineteenth century often ignored the close intertwining of many of these self-liberations with imperial power and colonial politics.2 We should also keep in mind that the elite women who were the focus of early feminist research on travel represented only a very small group among the many barely visible mobile women: the workers and servants, governesses, and teachers in search of an income far from home.3 The considerable cosmopolitan mobility between non-European countries and from those countries to the imperial centres has also long been overlooked.4

The travel practices developed by the women’s movements of the late nineteenth century must thus be seen against the background of class hierarchies and global power relations of the time.5 Many of those travelling to support the struggle for women’s rights and better living conditions were caught up in Eurocentric views of the world and perceived gender relations in many countries they visited from a European middle or upper-class perspective.6 Preconceptions about other cultures, modernity, and civilisation also influenced their travel experiences within Europe and in the USA. Käthe Schirmacher’s travels and travel writings serve as a good starting point for discussing these issues. As shown earlier in this book, she sought her fortune in foreign lands at an early age and saw the USA in particular as a place of promise (see Chapter 4). In her writing on the women’s movement as a global endeavour, she contributed to the exchange of knowledge between many countries but also spread orientalising views on gender relations and women’s movements in different lands (see Chapter 6).

In this chapter, I explore contexts and constellations of Schirmacher’s frequent travels and discuss narratives and images she created about the places she visited or imagined. In so doing, I first point to the importance of travel for all kinds of social and political movements and consequently for the spawning of national and transnational civil societies. I argue that analysing political travel practices and the motives and experiences of (often multilingual) travelling activists are crucial to understanding of social and political movements in nineteenth and twentieth centuries.7 Second, I submit that for many political travellers travel was not just a mission but also a way to earn a living. Schirmacher is a good example of this, too.

Starting from an article in which the author depicted herself as an ‘apostle’ on a journey through Germany, this chapter first examines the political practice of connecting and developing a movement through the travelling of activists. It then elaborates on how travel became an economic strategy for Schirmacher.8 The third section of the chapter focuses on examples of Schirmacher’s travel writing that illustrate both her intercultural assumptions and the expectations of the print market.

Apostle Journeys

The lead article in the 1896 Christmas issue of Neue Bahnen promised to convey impressions of an ‘apostle journey’ (Apostelreise) in the headline.9 The text creates the image of a message of salvation carried from one town to the next. The author—Käthe Schirmacher—identifies herself as such an ‘apostle’ and claims that on her last lecture tour she had witnessed a growing excitement, indeed an awakening throughout Germany and hopes that during the winter following her travels, self-educating groups of women might form in the whole country. For these emerging women communities who wanted to learn to think and argue in a structured and clear way, she recommended literature and gave advice on reading and debating strategies.10

Schirmacher had been travelling in Germany (and Austria) in early 1896 and later in the autumn. In January of that year, she had given a speech on the importance of the woman question for family life in the famous Gürzenich Hall in Cologne and another lecture on the same topic in Wiesbaden.11 After the International Congress of Women in Berlin, where she had talked about university studies for women, she toured from Rostock to Breslau, Dresden, Prague, and Munich with a lecture on women students.12 In view of this lecture tour, she described herself as a ‘true apostle-speaker’ (der reine Apostel-Redner) in a letter to her mother in 1896.13 Her text in Neue Bahnen ties in with this self-perception. It conveyed the same thoughts about women activists’ desire for knowledge and the importance of self-development, on both a personal and practical level, for the movement’s advancement that she had already expressed in her talk in Berlin.14 The article points to both how Schirmacher saw herself as a travelling missionary and the importance of travel practices for the development of women’s movements. It illustrates the practical and thematic links between different forms of political travel (conference trips, lecture tours) and the performative character of Schirmacher’s writing.

The circumstances of some of Schirmacher’s appearances in 1896 were quite remarkable. In Cologne, the mayor’s wife presided over the association for women’s further education and the dignitaries of the city were present at the event, which was attended by about a thousand people, as well as the subsequent banquet for a hundred guests.15 The prominent participation and lively attendance indicated a well-established public lecture culture. What was more, although the city was not known for its liberal-mindedness, the middle-class audience was familiar with speakers from the women’s movement.16 Young Schirmacher proudly noted that the famous senior leader of the movement, Helene Lange (1848–1930), had spoken at the same venue the year before.17 While these details hint at close ties of the movement with an elite milieu, it is worth exploring why Schirmacher in particular could attract such large audiences. Certainly, one can assume that as one of the very few German women to hold a doctorate, she aroused some curiosity about her personality. But the fact that she was able to build a career as a public speaker in the following years indicates more specific competences and aspirations.

As shown by Ulla Wischermann, the women’s movement in the German Reich (the liberal as well as the socialist organisations) developed dense networks through travelling speakers commuting between local and regional groups and associations.18 A considerable part of the movement’s activities consisted of meetings with invited speakers. ‘Propaganda’ committees organised extensive lecture programmes and the publicity put out by the movement announced the travel itineraries of major speakers in advance as well as reporting on many events afterwards, often also covering the discussion that had followed a talk.19 There were different types of events, including public lectures for a general audience as well as smaller meetings with local activists. The supra-regional and national federations hoped in this way to strengthen the close ties between their branches and members, but also to stimulate the founding of new local groups.20 Some lecturers had a more regional significance, while others achieved national and even international prominence, some of them giving several talks a week in different cities.21 The strategy followed the example of other countries, the USA particularly. Prominent activists from the USA travelled extensively throughout Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, shaping both the American view of Europe and the model of political travel.22

Travelling lecturers were indeed a widespread phenomenon at the time. This was greatly facilitated by the rapid development of the technology and logistics of travel, especially the growing railway network. Artists as well as scholars and scientists went on extended tours and developed transnational lives.23 On a more local level, too, travelling speakers commuted between communities. Adult education centres and workers’ education movements in many countries contributed to the phenomenon, while magic lantern presentations also attracted large audiences.24 Based on the example of political activists travelling in Galicia, Dietlind Hüchtker has pointed to a particular type of travel that was central to the spawning of political movements there.25 Building on this argument and other research about travel as a cultural practice, Elizabeth Harvey and I have argued that the social and political movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries cannot be understood properly without analysing the important contribution of travelling activists to their development.26 New political ideas were not only spread by books and newspapers, but also by national and transnational meetings and conferences as well as by lecturers who took them from town to town and also to villages.27

Käthe Schirmacher was an important travelling speaker not only in Germany. She was a good networker and was considered by many to be an excellent speaker, so that she connected French and German-speaking countries through her lecture tours for about two decades. While the majority of her talks were held in German towns and cities, she also went to Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, and once also to Russia.28 Schirmacher, who found it easy to connect with other people, made an effort to maintain relationships through correspondence once they had been established. In Prague, for example, she stayed at the home of Hugo and Emmanuel Grab, two fellow travellers she had met in the USA, and it seems very likely that they had facilitated her speech in the city.29 Her other appearances in 1896 had obviously been arranged in connection with the International Congress of Women in Berlin in September.30

In connection with her networking practices, Schirmacher also carefully prepared the circumstances of her lectures by gathering information in advance about the places she visited. During her travels, she also made notes about her experiences and observations. In this way she created several notebooks organised by place.31 She usually included statistical data on the population, information about the economy (the main industries, the numbers of workers, their social situation, etc.), on the political situation and influential groups, the state and the main protagonists of the women’s movement, and on whether there was a nursery or a girl’s school. In addition to this general information, Schirmacher also recorded personal experiences in other people’s homes where she was usually a guest during her stays. She often jotted down the names and occupations of those who were present at a social event, what they had talked about and whom she liked. Last but not least, she took notes about topics that went down well with her hosts and influential ideologies or beliefs in particular locations. In spring 1897, for example, she documented that the people in a certain town adhered to a particularly strict form of Protestantism and preferred Bible study to theatre. She cautioned herself in her notebook never to attack the Bible there.32

With all this information in mind, Schirmacher developed a number of speeches on different topics which she adapted to specific occasions and circumstances. Her topics included women’s higher education, the protection of women workers, prostitution, the right to vote, and domestic work. She often used striking, pointed titles, sometimes with an ironic touch whose irony only became clear in the speech. The title of one very successful speech, for instance, claimed that a woman’s proper place was the home, another asked what use the women’s movement was for men.33 As in her journalistic work, she also made use of her transnational experience and gave talks on social life in France, on the American women’s movement, or reported on women’s conferences she had attended. Sometimes she combined her lectures for the women’s movement with a second talk in the same city on a more general subject such as French literature. She also appeared at discussion evenings with smaller groups on an agreed topic; sometimes these evenings resulted in the founding of an association, for example for suffrage or against the regulation of prostitution.34 Since she used the same speeches more than once, they must have developed into well-calculated performances. These seem to have been quite successful, as is suggested not only by her letters to her mother, in which she reports dozens, sometimes hundreds of listeners and lively debates, but also by the newspaper reports of her performances that she collected and kept.35 The performative aspect of her speeches was also supported by her great interest in becoming a playwright—in 1904 she had huge success reading a theatre piece she had written herself before large audiences in Berlin.36

Fishing Hauls

Between 1893 (the year of her transatlantic trip) and the beginning of the First World War, Schirmacher travelled mainly for purposes in relation to women’s movements and abolitionism (the fight for the abolishment of laws regulating prostitution), although from 1905 onwards and particularly after 1910 she increasingly included appearances in German nationalist contexts.37 The political mission and message notwithstanding, the lecture tours also created part of her income. Although the question of lecture fees was controversial in the women’s movement, Schirmacher received payment for her lectures and was even known for the high fees she demanded.38 Her income was increased by the way she organised her trips. Most of her travels were made in winter, between November and March. In this way she saved on heating costs in her Paris apartment. Since she mostly stayed in the private houses of local activists, she had no living costs either. As a prominent public figure of the movement, she was often cared for by her hosts very generously. Many of these women saw her as a friend and some invited her for recreational sojourns to their country homes.39 A 1905 letter to her mother captured a typical situation:

Today a day of rest. It is grey outside, dark and very wet. From 9.45 to 11.15 I studied the railway guide to organise my ten cities. Wrote until 1.30 pm. Since 5 pm back at the writing desk. Nobody worries about me. I am happy. Very rich house, every comfort. (‚Heute Ruhetag. Ganz grau, trüb, hundenass. Ich habe von 3/4 10 – 11 1/4 das Cursbuch studirt, um meine 10 Städte zu disponiren. Bis 1/2 2 geschrieben. Und jetzt wieder seit 5 Uhr am Schreibtisch.– Keine Seele kümmert sich um mich. Ich bin glücklich.– Sehr reiches Haus, aller Comfort.’)40

This description shows that Schirmacher used her temporary homes as workplaces for her journalism and, therefore, preferred houses where she could retire to a quiet, undisturbed place to read and write. But she also sometimes praised herself as someone who could write anywhere. For example, when she missed a connecting train on her transcontinental journey from Chicago to San Francisco in 1893, she wrote to her sister that she went to a local hotel, rented a room for a few hours and composed a report on the Chicago events for a German newspaper—and a letter home describing the situation.41

Schirmacher planned her lecture tours well in advance. During her winter journeys she inquired of her hosts whether a visit in the following year would be welcome, and what topic would be of interest. About six months before setting off, she usually had some fixed appointments and developed an itinerary. She then wrote to associations, activist groups, and single personalities in the cities along her planned route proposing topics and asking whether they were interested in a lecture. In this way she organised her travels for several months every year. She gave talks in both French and German, often starting off with one language and then translating her own text into the other and publishing them in both languages.42 The lecture ‘La femme au foyer’ first given in Brussels in 1897 is a good case in point. It was translated into ‘Die Frau gehört ins Haus’ (Woman’s place is in the home) in the same year and given in many German venues.43 A favourable newspaper report on one such presentation conveyed what was part of the attraction, at least in Schirmacher’s early travelling years: her charming personality that contradicted assumptions about woman scholars and feminist activists.44 Reports in women’s magazines on her career considerably raised her profile among women; the younger ones often saw her as a role model.45 The intentional play with both negative and positive preconceptions of learned women was part of Schirmacher’s performance, a strategy she must have learned at La Fronde where Marguerite Durand deliberately used her own past as an admired stage beauty to propagate her political ideas.46

For several years this was a successful financial strategy. The more continuous income from journalism (particularly for those newspapers where she had an agreement to provide regular articles) was upped by the payments Schirmacher received from her talks. For her, this was more lucrative than a permanent teaching engagement. She refused a position as the director of a newly founded reform school in Hamburg that required a permanent presence in the city.47 On another occasion she wrote to her mother that a permanent position was not attractive for her as it forced her to abstain from important ‘fishing hauls’ (Fischzüge) that her current position as a freelance writer allowed.48 Schirmacher, who was one of the most sought-after speakers in the movement, gave several dozens of lectures per year.49 For the year 1905, for example, she documented fifty-six lectures in different cities.50 Payment usually came from the local groups. However, there was also funding from the higher ranks. When planning their ‘propaganda trips’ (Propagandareisen) for the next year, the ‘propaganda department’ (Propagandakomitee) of the German Federation of Progressive Women’s Associations (Verband Fortschrittlicher Frauenvereine, VFF) listed those speakers who needed funding and those who were wealthy enough to travel at their own expense.51 What is more, rich supporters of the movement like Lida-Gustava Heymann, who had inherited a fortune, also subsidised speaking tours. When they fell out over political issues, Heymann told Schirmacher in one angry letter that she had funded many of her travels for the International Abolitionist Federation in Germany (Fig. 7.1).52

Fig. 7.1
A photograph of Kathe Schirmacher standing with a book and papers on the table.

Käthe Schirmacher posing as a public speaker, Nantes 1902 (University Library Rostock, Käthe Schirmacher Papers)

Full size image

However, in the course of her growing conflicts with the German radicals, it became more difficult for Schirmacher to organise her lecture tours. She now had a leaflet printed that announced several talks she was prepared to give with a short biography on the back page and a list of her most important publications.53 At a time when she could no longer rely on networks established by the movement, she had to find new ways to advertise herself.

Imagining the Other

Travel is not only a practice, it also has a strong self-reflexive side and motivates diverse forms of autobiographical writing. Travellers often document their journeys for themselves, to keep a record of their experiences. But many of them also turn these reflections into a commodity.54 Schirmacher also utilised her transnational life in her work for her writing. Many of her essays show her as a passionate traveller who was on the road to learn, relax, and work. Some of her most successful texts addressed travellers who came to places she knew well. For example, her book on Paris, published in 1900, the year of the world exhibition, introduced her readers to the city that was then her home.55 An enthusiastic review recommended it as perfect reading material for the railway journey to the French capital.56 However, many of her articles also were travel writing in a more conventional sense: descriptions of holidays in the mountains and at sea, reports from travels in foreign countries, and excursions into parts of cities which middle-class travellers often avoided.57 With all these texts Schirmacher participated in a genre that provided narratives and pictures of a variety of particular places for its readers and thereby established both a stabilised understanding of the self of the author and an image of a distant ‘other’. I briefly analyse three different examples here to show that factual reports and various forms of idealisation and exoticisation are often closely interwoven.

A journey to Egypt, where Schirmacher stayed for several weeks in the house of a befriended family in the spring of 1895, was not only reflected in lively letters home in which she described street life in Cairo and excursions to famous sites of ancient Egypt, but also resulted in a lecture in Paris and a long article in a German newspaper.58 Ulla Siebert has rightly emphasised the exoticisations of this text (and Schirmacher’s letters home); she has shown in detail the hierarchies that Schirmacher implies between European culture and the image of the ‘primitive people’ that is behind many of Schirmacher’s descriptions. Her analysis also demonstrates how European women strengthened their concept of themselves as emancipated women through exoticising depictions of native women.59

A close reading of Schirmacher’s text on Egypt, however, also reveals other dimensions: her idealisation of disappearing ‘originality’ (Originalität) from the entire world is linked to praise of the cultural richness of a multicultural society, with reflections on the ambivalence of modernisation and critiques of the banality arising from mass tourism. Underpinned by anti-British sentiment, Schirmacher feared that British rule would ‘reduce and purge primitive Egypt until it was a well-ordered travel region for the Thomas Cook Company’.60 She pointed to the multilingualism of the country and to its important poetry as well as to the different cultures and the tolerance that shaped daily life in Egypt. In her view, Europeans often were unable to deal with the complex situations this created.61 As an experienced traveller, she stressed the importance of knowing the language and shared some of her strategies of getting closer to native people by accepting their habits.62 We can thus say that in her descriptions of Egyptian life, two conceptions of civilisation collided: she emphasised both the destructive side of European civilising missions and the emancipatory effects as experienced by women in particular.63

A vivid description of a stay in a very different place, the Tyrolean mountains, reveals similar ambivalences. Schirmacher depicts the natives there as people with strange habits, tastes, and beliefs, but claims that by accepting and embracing these oddities she has experienced great pleasure.64 She portrays herself as an intrepid mountaineer, hiking and climbing high mountains, mingling with the locals, and enjoying the company of unkempt fellow travellers with patched clothes and rude manners.65 Schirmacher praises the lack of culture and the free atmosphere in the mountains and declares that the ‘filth of the cities’ (Grosstadtschmutz) and ‘racial hatred’ (Rassenhass) have no place there. Women, she claims, dress in the same practical way as their male companions and have the right to roam freely in the wilderness of the forests.66 Her critique of civilisation becomes even clearer where she depicts her return to the lowlands and regrets being confronted again with culture, people, and their vanities.67

Although the description of the Austrian mountains testifies to greater cultural proximity than the encounter with Egypt, the exoticisation of the Tyroleans, who supposedly wore earrings and knives and believed in saints and angels for whom they set up naïve commemorative signs all over the landscape, is striking. And she indeed implies a similar political message in both travel reports. In both cases, she observes other tourists and divides them into those who are able to overcome their sensitivities and become friends with the locals and those who are unable to see and enjoy what is foreign to them.68 I argue that by thus creating images of various ‘others’, Schirmacher formulated a critique of civilisation that left room for differences; at the same time she also developed an image of herself as a liberal-minded person and as a traveller who was genuinely interested in places she visited. In both cases she praised the openness and the tolerance of the locals and appreciated those fellow tourists who were able to adapt their manners to their environment. In this way, she also contributed to the creation of a persona capable of adapting to different circumstances and acting accordingly: the modern traveller.

A further text describing conditions in a country Schirmacher visited sheds light on yet another use she made of the concept of civilisation. In her reports on girls’ schools and women’s universities in Britain she unequivocally acknowledged the country’s efforts to support women’s pursuit of higher education.69 Telling the story of women’s struggle for access to universities, she explains the most important institutions and describes life and learning at women’s colleges.70 She gives a particularly enthusiastic description of the newly founded ‘Holloway University’ [sic; at that time Royal Holloway College] which was established through the financial support of a generous sponsor and his wife. She praises the combination of scientific and humanist education, physical exercise, and political debate and emphasises the generosity of the institution, which was dedicated above all to those women who could not afford to study at university from their own means.71 Expressing her admiration also for the magnificent buildings, she compliments the ‘splendid and ‘regal’ appearance and calls the whole institution a ‘flower of civilisation’ which other countries can only emulate.72

Despite her ambivalence about civilisation in her articles on Egypt and Tyrol, Schirmacher uses the notion ‘civilisation’ as a clearly positive term in her descriptions of women’s higher education in the UK. Two conclusions can be drawn from this. First, it shows that in her writings Schirmacher placed comprehensiveness and differentiation above consistency with previous opinions she had expressed. This has already been demonstrated in relation to her adaptions of the concept of civilisation in the second edition of Die moderne Frauenbewegung (see Chapter 6). Second, it shows that she used her descriptions of places she had visited to present alternatives to the political and social status quo. By presenting images of other ways of living in other countries, she was able to imagine as feasible what seemed so difficult to change in the time and society in which her readers lived. Consequently, in these articles, it was not so important for her to convey consistent and durable sociological concepts, but rather to have a useful vocabulary to explore a variety of political and cultural possibilities. In this context, the terms ‘civilisation’ and ‘barbarism’ had shifting meanings.

Notes

  1. 1.

    Alba Amoia and Bettina L. Knapp, eds., Great Women Travel Writers. From 1750 to the Present (New York, London: Continuum, 2006). Tamara Felden, Frauen Reisen. Zur literarischen Repräsentation weiblicher Geschlechterrollenerfahrung im 19. Jahrhundert (New York et al.: Lang, 1993); Doris Jedamski, Hiltgund Jehle, and Ulla Siebert, eds., ‘Und tät das Reisen wählen!’. Frauenreisen—Reisefrauen (Dortmund: eFeF, 1994); Annegret Pelz, Reisen durch die eigene Fremde. Reiseliteratur von Frauen als autogeograpische Schriften (Köln et al.: Böhlau, 1993); Yaël Rachel Schlick, Feminism and the Politics of Travel after the Enlightenment (New Jersey: Bucknell University Press, 2012).

  2. 2.

    Sara Mills, Discourses of Difference. An Analysis of Women’s Travel Writing and Colonialism (London, New York: Routledge, 1991); Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation (London and New York Routledge, 1992); Gabriele Habinger, Frauen reisen in die Fremde. Diskurse und Repräsentationen von reisenden Europäerinnen im 19. und beginnenden 20. Jahrhundert (Wien: Promedia, 2006); Ulla Siebert, ‘Reise. Nation. Text. Repräsentationen von “Nationalität” in Reisetexten deutscher Frauen, 1871 bis 1914’, in Frauen und Nation, eds. Frauen & Geschichte Baden-Württemberg (Tübingen: Silberburg, 1996).

  3. 3.

    Mareike König, ‘Konfliktbeladene Kulturvermittlung—Deutsche Dienstmädchen und Erzieherinnen in Paris um 1900’, in Transkulturalität. Gender- und bildungshistorische Perspektiven, eds. Wolfgang Gippert et al. (Bielefeld: Transkript, 2008), 237–56; Wolfgang Gippert, ‘Das Ausland als Chance und Modell: Frauenbildung im viktorianischen England im Spiegel von Erfahrungsberichten deutscher Lehrerinnen’, in Transkulturalität. Gender- und bildungshistorische Perspektiven, ed. Wolfgang Gippert (Bielefeld: Transkript, 2008), 181–200; Levke Harders, ‘Migration und Biographie. Mobile Leben beschreiben’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 29, no. 3 (2018), 17–36.

  4. 4.

    Jane Haggis, Clare Midgley, Margaret Allen, Fiona Pasisley, Cosmopolitan Lives on the Cusp of Empire. Interfaith, Cross-Cultural and Transnational Networks, 1860–1950 (London: Palgrave, 2017).

  5. 5.

    Bonnie S. Anderson, Joyous Greetings. The First International Women’s Movement 1830–1860 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Karen Hunt, ‘“Whirl’d through the World”: The Role of Travel in the Making of Dora Montefiore’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften (OeZG) 22, no. 1 (2011), 41–63; Ulla Wischermann, Frauenbewegungen und Öffentlichkeiten um 1900. Netzwerke, Gegenöffentlichkeiten, Protestinszenierungen (Königstein/Taunus: Helmer, 2003).

  6. 6.

    Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History. British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Antoinette Burton, ‘Some Trajectories of “Feminism” and “Imperalism”’, in Feminisms and Internationalism, eds. Mrinalini Sinha, Donna Guy, and Angela Woollacott (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999).

  7. 7.

    Johanna Gehmacher and Elizabeth Harvey, eds., Politisch Reisen, vol. 22, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften (ÖZG) (Innsbruck: StudienVerlag, 2011); Dietlind Hüchtker, ‘Frauen und Männer reisen. Geschlechtsspezifische Perspektiven von Reformpolitik in Berichten über Galizien um 1900’, in Die Welt erfahren. Reisen als kulturelle Begegnung von 1780 bis heute, eds. Arnd Bauernkämper, Hans Erich Bödeker, and Bernhard Struck (Frankfurt/M. and New York: 2004), 375–90; Brigitte Studer, Reisende der Weltrevolution: eine Globalgeschichte der Kommunistischen Internationale (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2020).

  8. 8.

    For an earlier analysis see Johanna Gehmacher, ‘Moderne Frauen, die Neue Welt und der alte Kontinent. Käthe Schirmacher reist im Netzwerk der Frauenbewegung’, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften (OeZG) 22, no. 1 (2011), 16–40; Johanna Gehmacher, ‘Reisende in Sachen Frauenbewegung. Käthe Schirmacher zwischen Internationalismus und nationaler Identifikation’, Ariadne, no. 60 (November 2011), 58–65; Johanna Gehmacher, ‘Reisekostenabrechnung. Praktiken und Ökonomien des Unterwegsseins in Frauenbewegungen um 1900’, Feministische Studien 35, no. 1 (2017), 76–92.

  9. 9.

    Käthe Schirmacher, ‘Die Haupteindrücke einer Apostelreise’, Neue Bahnen. Organ des allgemeinen deutschen Frauenvereins, 15 December 1896.

  10. 10.

    Ibid.

  11. 11.

    Kölner Frauen-Fortbildungs-Verein, ‘Oeffentlicher Vortrag von Fräulein Dr. phil. Käthe Schirmacher aus Danzig über Die Bedeutung der Frauenfrage für das Familienleben’, Kölnische Zeitung, 27 January 1896; Nl Schirmacher 011/007, Helene Marx to Clara and Richard Schirmacher, 2 February 1896.

  12. 12.

    Käthe Schirmacher, ‘Das Universitätsstudium der Frauen’, in Der Internationale Kongress für Frauenwerke und Frauenbestrebungen in Berlin 19. bis 26. September 1896. Eine Sammlung der auf dem Kongress gehaltenen Vorträge und Ansprachen, eds. Rosalie Schoenflies et al. (Berlin: H. Walther, 1897), 158–60; Rostocker Zeitung, 30 October 1896; Nl Schirmacher 011/030, 032, 033, 034 KS to Clara and Richard Schirmacher, 28, 31 October, 2 and 5 November 1896.

  13. 13.

    Nl Schirmacher 011/001, KS to Clara Schirmacher, 11 January 1896.

  14. 14.

    Schirmacher, ‘Das Universitätsstudium’, 158.

  15. 15.

    Nl Schirmacher 011/006, KS to Clara and Richard Schirmacher, 6 February 1896.

  16. 16.

    Mathilde von Mevissen, who invited Schirmacher on behalf of the Cologne Women’s Association for Further Education (Frauen-Fortbildungsverein) had asked her to avoid controversial issues such a religion or political rights. Nl Schirmacher 567/026, Mathilde von Mevissen to KS, 10 January 1896.

  17. 17.

    Nl Schirmacher 011/006, KS to Clara and Richard Schirmacher, 6 February 1896.

  18. 18.

    Wischermann, Frauenbewegungen, 176–90; see also Gehmacher, ‘Reisende’.

  19. 19.

    Wischermann, Frauenbewegungen, 187–88; Ibid., 60–61.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., 184–85.

  21. 21.

    Ibid., 190.

  22. 22.

    The trip to Europe Susan B. Anthony undertook with Rachel Foster (Avery) was described in detail, for example, in the extensive biography Ida Husted Harper wrote about the prominent American. Ida Husted Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, Including Public Addresses, her own Letters, and Many from her Contemporaries during Fifty Years, 3 vols. (Indianapolis: Bowen-Merrill, 1898), 551–579.

  23. 23.

    For example, Davide Rodogno, Bernhard Struck, and Jakob Vogel, Shaping the Transnational Sphere: Experts, Networks, and Issues from the 1840s to the 1930s, Studies in Contemporary European History (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2015); Orlando Figes, The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture (UK: Allen Lane, 2019).

  24. 24.

    Karen Eifler, The Great Gun of the Lantern. Lichtbildereinsatz sozialer Organisationen in Großbritannien (1875–1914) (Marburg: Schüren, 2017); Christian H. Stifter, ‘Knowledge, Authority and Power: The Impact of University Extension on Popular Education in Vienna 1890–1910’, in Masters, Missionaries and Militants. Studies of Social Movements and Popular Adult Education 1890–1939, eds. Barry J. Hake, Tom Steele, and Alejandro Tiana (Leeds: University of Leeds, 1996); Johanna Gehmacher, ‘“Frauenarbeit” 1903 oder: Feminismus im Modus der Anschaulichkeit’, in Popularisierungen von Geschlechterwissen seit der Vormoderne, eds. Muriel González Athenas and Falko Schnicke (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2020), 215–38.

  25. 25.

    Hüchtker, ‘Frauen und Männer’, 376.

  26. 26.

    Gehmacher and Harvey, Politisch Reisen; see also Arnd Bauerkämper, Hans Erich Bödeker, and Bernhard Struck, eds., Die Welt erfahren. Reisen als kulturelle Begegnung von 1780 bis heute (Frankfurt/M. and New York: Campus, 2004).

  27. 27.

    For an overview on early transnational feminist congresses Ulla Wikander and Marilyn J. Boxer, Women’s Early Transnationalism and Independent Feminist Congresses, 1868–1915 (Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street, 2014).

  28. 28.

    Gehmacher, ‘Reisende’; Gehmacher, ‘Reisekostenabrechnung’; Johanna Gehmacher, Elisa Heinrich, and Corinna Oesch, Käthe Schirmacher: Agitation und autobiografische Praxis zwischen radikaler Frauenbewegung und völkischer Politik (Wien et al.: 2018), 264–265 (Oesch).

  29. 29.

    Nl Schirmacher 011/033, KS to Clara Schirmacher, 2 November 1896.

  30. 30.

    Just one example for this is Mathilde von Mevissen who had organised her first lecture in Cologne. Obviously Schirmacher encouraged her to write her about her life which she did in extended letters kept in Schirmacher’s paper. Nl Schirmacher 546/001-3, Mathilde von Mevissen to KS, 9 February 1896, 16 March 1896, 14 May 1896.

  31. 31.

    For example, Nl Sch 980/002, Notebook 1896/97; 661/001 Notebook 1903.

  32. 32.

    Nl Schirmacher 980/002, Notebook 1896/97, 9.

  33. 33.

    Was nutzt die Frauenbewegung dem Manne? [‘What use is the women’s movement for men?’]; ‘Die Frau gehört ins Haus’ [‘Woman’s place is in the home’]; the second title had been used before for a lecture by another activist: Marie Stritt, ‘Die Frau gehört ins Haus’, vol. 8, Lose Blätter im Interesse der Frauenfrage, 23 October 1893.

  34. 34.

    Nl Sch 690/001, Notebook Congresses, Lectures 1904/05. On Schirmacher’s work for the abolitionist movement see Gehmacher, Heinrich, and Oesch, Käthe Schirmacher, 326–350 (Oesch); on the German branch of the international abolitionist movement in Germany see Julia Roos, Weimar through the Lens of Gender. Prostitution Reform, Women’s Emancipation, and German Democracy, 1919–33 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010); Bettina Kretzschmar, ‘Gleiche Moral und gleiches Recht für Mann und Frau’. Der deutsche Zweig der Internationalen abolitionistischen Bewegung (1899–1933) (Sulzbach: Helmer, 2014).

  35. 35.

    For example, Nl Sch 121/005, KS to Clara Schirmacher, 5 February 1903; Nl Sch 401/020; 120/015, KS to Clara Schirmacher, 13, 14 September 1904; Nl Sch 401/028, newspaper clipping 13 September 1904.

  36. 36.

    The reading took place during the 1904 women’s congress in Berlin and was covered widely by the press. Nl Sch 308/008, KS to Clara Schirmacher, 13 June 1904; Nl Schirmacher 308/007, 844/001-013 newspaper clippings.

  37. 37.

    Gehmacher, Heinrich, and Oesch, Käthe Schirmacher, 397–98 (Oesch).

  38. 38.

    For example, Nl Sch 531/001, P. S. Kügelgen to KS, 4 September 1909; for high fee demands see Christina Klausmann, Politik und Kultur der Frauenbewegung im Kaiserreich das Beispiel Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt/M. et al.: Campus, 1997), 59; For the debate on fees see Gilla Dölle, Die (un)heimliche Macht des Geldes. Finanzierungsstrategien der bürgerlichen Frauenbewegung in Deutschland zwischen 1865 und 1933 (Frankfurt/M: Dipa, 1997), 62–8.

  39. 39.

    On an invitation for a week in Helgoland after a conference see Nl Sch 011/029, KS to Clara and Richard Schirmacher, 26 September 1896.

  40. 40.

    Nl Schirmacher 119/005, KS to Clara Schirmacher, 14 February 1905.

  41. 41.

    Nl Schirmacher 017/037, KS to Charlotte Münsterberg, 29 Mai 1893; see Käthe Schirmacher, ‘Der internationale Frauenkongress in Chicago’, Nationalzeitung, 25 June 1893).

  42. 42.

    For a description of her travel practices see Gehmacher, ‘Reisende’.

  43. 43.

    Käthe Schirmacher, ‘La femme et le foyer (Rede). Bruxelles 1897’, La Ligue. Organe belge du droit des femmes 5, no. 2 (Avril 1897); see Nl Schirmacher 126/003, KS to Clara and Richard Schirmacher, 1 February 1897.

  44. 44.

    Anonymous, ‘Die Frau gehört ins Haus’, Frankfurter Zeitung, 14 March 1897.

  45. 45.

    For example, Lina Morgenstern, ‘Käthe Schirmacher’, Frauen-Reich: Deutsche Hausfrauen-Zeitung 24, no. 1 (1897).

  46. 46.

    Marie Louise Roberts, ‘Acting Up: The Feminist Theatrics of Marguerite Durand’, French Historical Studies 19, no. 4 (1996), 1103–38.

  47. 47.

    Nl Sch 123/001, KS to Clara Schirmacher [1901].

  48. 48.

    Nl Sch 122/033, KS to Clara Schirmacher, 23 September 1902; see also: Nl Sch 119/025, KS to Clara Schirmacher, 15 November 1905.

  49. 49.

    Wischermann, Frauenbewegungen, 184.

  50. 50.

    Nl Sch 690/001, Notebook Congresses, Lectures 1904/05.

  51. 51.

    Gehmacher, ‘Reisende’, 85–87.

  52. 52.

    Nl Schirmacher 992/023, Lida-Gustava Heymann to KS, 29 May 1908; see also Gehmacher, ‘Reisekostenabrechnung’, 88.

  53. 53.

    Nl Sch 993/002, advertisment (1909).

  54. 54.

    Hagen Schulz-Forberg, ‘European Travel and Travel Writing. Cultural Practice and the Idea of Europe’, in Unravelling Civilisation. European Travel and Travel Writing, ed. Hagen Schulz-Forberg (Brussels et al.: European Interuniversity Press, 2005), 13–40.

  55. 55.

    Käthe Schirmacher, Paris! Ill. von Arnould Moreaux und F. Marks (Berlin, 1900).

  56. 56.

    Tk., ‘Paris! Von Dr. Käthe Schirmacher’, in Die Frauenbewegung 6, no. 11 (1900).

  57. 57.

    A selection of these articles is collected in: Käthe Schirmacher, Aus aller Herren Länder. Gesammelte Feuilletons (Paris, Leipzig: H. Welter, 1897).

  58. 58.

    Nl Schirmacher 11/001, 001a, 003; KS to Clara Schirmacher, 11, 24 January 1897; Käthe Schirmacher, ‘Neu-Egypten’, Frankfurter Zeitung, 24 March 1895.

  59. 59.

    Ulla Siebert, ‘“Von Anderen, von mir und vom Reisen”. Selbst und Fremdkonstruktionen reisender Frauen um 1900 am Beispiel von Käthe Schirmacher und Emma Vely’, in Nahe Fremde – Fremde Nähe. Frauen forschen zu Ethnos, Kultur, Geschlecht, ed. Widee (Wien: 1993); see also: Ulla Siebert, ‘Aus aller Herren Länder.’ Reiserfahrungen von Käthe Schirmacher, in Die vielen Biographien der Käthe Schirmacher – eine virtuelle Konferenz, accessed 20 June 2022, http://schirmacherproject.univie.ac.at/die-vielen-biographien-der-kaethe-schirmacher/statements/ulla-siebert/.

  60. 60.

    Käthe Schirmacher, ‘Neu-Ägypten’, in Aus aller Herren Länder. Gesammelte Feuilletons (Paris, Leipzig: H. Welter, 1897), 70.

  61. 61.

    Schirmacher, ‘Neu-Ägypten’, 74–79.

  62. 62.

    Ibid., 71, 75–76.

  63. 63.

    Schirmacher, ‘Neu-Ägypten’, 74.

  64. 64.

    Ibid., 45.

  65. 65.

    Schirmacher, ‘Das heilige Land Tyrol.’

  66. 66.

    Ibid., 42.

  67. 67.

    Ibid., 53.

  68. 68.

    Ibid., 48–9.

  69. 69.

    For example, Käthe Schirmacher, ‘Eine englische Mädchenschule’, in Aus aller Herren Länder. Gesammelte Feuilletons (Paris, Leipzig: H. Welter, 1897), 253–64; Käthe Schirmacher, ‘Ann Clough’, Neue Bahnen. Organ des allgemeinen deutschen Frauenvereins, 15 June 1892.

  70. 70.

    For example, Käthe Schirmacher, ‘Newnham’, Nationalzeitung, 12 July 1891.

  71. 71.

    Schirmacher, ‘Die englischen Frauen-Universitäten’, Nationalzeitung, 31 May 1891.

  72. 72.

    Ibid.